Buckjumper's Blog

Don't forget the buffer heads :-)

 

Nice work too - like the photo plank as well.

 

Was it usual for tenders (or locos) dating from 1890 to survive to BR days (the lion & wheel logo on the side)?

Thanks! Buffer heads, links for the coupling, fire irons, bucket... all yet to be fixed in place.

 

Survival was more common than you might think. For example, two J65s (1889, 1893) several J66s (all 1887) and 120 out of 140 J67 & J69 (narrow cab variety) all made it, 118 of which were built in the 1890s. In fact, of the 33 built in the year 1890, only five didn't make it.

 

A good number of E4s from the 1890s survived, some running with pre-1892 tenders. Seven J15s from the 1880s survived to carry the BR livery, five from 1890s, and another 34 from the rest of the 1890s did too (in fact all J15s built between 1899 and 1913 survived to carry the livery) and a great many lasted right through to the late 1950s - even to the end of steam on the GE in 1962. Sixteen even gained the crest after May 1957, the earliest of these was 65420 built in January 1892 which saw the lights go out in August 1962. Many were still running with pre-1892 tenders to the end.

 

I'm not sure how often this happened, but due to tender changing there was one loco which in 1959 reverted to an earlier livery; 65469 of 1912 originally had a third-hand tender built in 1895 for a T19 2-4-0 (what later became the 4-4-0 LNER D13s), which in 1898 was given to a P43 4-2-2 and then stored for five years until 1912 after that loco was withdrawn. It was then paired with (what became) J15 65469, even gaining the crest in 1957 until condemned in 1959. 65469 then gained an even older pre-1892 tender with the earlier 1949 emblem from a withdrawn loco and ran with it until it too was withdrawn. I built a model of this loco with the pre-1892 tender here.

Thank you for the quite comprehensive reply.

 

I was aware that some steam locomotives had long (>50 years) lives, but assumed that they were tank/shunting engines in the majority hence the question about long lived tenders. Perhaps it depended on the area of operations.

The big advantage the GER had over its fellow constituents of the LNER was the legacy of nearly 40 years of standardisation instigated by James Holden and continued through to Grouping.

 

So for example, of the 29 classes extant in 1923, there were six standard boilers covering 20 classes - 89% of the total loco stock - with 9 non-standard boilers for the rest. Likewise there were five standard motion and cylinder types covering 23 classes - 97% of the stock with six non-standard types covering the remaining 3%. As locos became life-expired, any parts which were still in good condition could be stockpiled and reused later. Tenders could be moved from loco to loco, even across the class divide, and were even stored for years until needed.